Category: Processes

Game developers benefit from single-sourced suite of Asian game localization and testing services

Montreal 24 November 2016: Montreal-based Bug-Tracker Laboratories, dedicated to quality assurance and localization testing in the video gaming industry, announced today the signing of a strategic partnership with Singapore-based EQHO Globalization, a specialists in Asian game localization.

Both companies count major gaming brands such as Bandai, Blizzard and EA as clients, so the partnership will accelerate the Asian language localization-to-testing process by providing game developers with a suite of integrated games localization, multilingual voice production, testing and QA services. Bug-Tracker had a presence in China for six years so will leverage this experience for a strategic re-entry into the lucrative Southeast Asian markets, which is poised to grow to $2.2 billion by 2017. Bug-Tracker will establish secure testing facilities within EQHO’s Bangkok production center, whilst EQHO will benefit by establishing a physical presence in the $3 billion Canadian games market.

“We’re excited about the growth opportunities brought about by this mutually beneficial partnership”, stated Antoine Carre, President of Bug-Tracker Laboratories. “Our services complement each other, resulting in the further development of activity in the emerging Southeast Asian market, ultimately promoting and contributing to its growth. A joint venture with EQHO is our ultimate goal.”

Commenting on the recently penned agreement, Phanitanan Sanitprachakorn, EQHO’s Group CEO, said, “Bug-Tracker broadens and deepens our game testing services so we can better serve our clients with a more integrated service portfolio. We are looking forward to making the partnership work, take advantage of the respective geographical expansion we are providing each, whilst leveraging EQHO’s 20 years of Asian game localization expertise along the way”.

The Asian games market has grown 10.7% year-on-year compared to an industry average of 8.5% and, according to Newzoo, Asia represents 58% of the growth of the global games market. As games developers look East to drive more revenues, EQHO is rolling out consulting services to provide market entry strategies, partner identification and distribution channels, especially in ‘Big 6’ markets, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, for global games developers.

About EQHO

Headquartered in Raffles Place, Singapore, and with end-to-end production centers in Thailand and Laos, EQHO Globalization Pte. Ltd. delivers complex, multi-discipline translation and multilingual voice services to global brand leaders, including 23 of the Forbes Top 30 companies. In 2015, EQHO’s team of 3,500 linguists translated 80 million words into 60 languages and delivered 51,666 minutes of multilingual audio. EQHO is ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 17100:2015 certified by Intertek, and is recognized by the Common Sense Advisory as one of Asia’s fastest growing language service providers.

About Bug-Tracker Labs

The many services offered at Bug-Tracker Laboratories include functionality, localization and certification testing in a wide range of mobile applications, PC, console and virtual reality games. Through their 18 years of experience in the gaming industry, Bug-Tracker has developed the most efficient processes and methodologies to accompany you to success through the last steps before the launch of your titles. For more information, visit www.bug-tracker.com.

Game – do you find Games Testing fun?

YES! The best part is being involved in the creative process. Whether it be interpreting something for a new culture, or making improvements that include actual gamers, it’s incredibly rewarding. When you can see your hard work in action on the final release of the game, it makes it all worthwhile.

What are the key components or methodologies of Games Testing?

There are 4 types of tests. First, there’s the Build Verification Test. The build verification test, or subsequent smoke testing, share the similar objective of eliminating potential bugs before localization testing starts. Typical build criteria include, is the build installable? Does it run? Is it free of major flaws? Can it be tested further?

The second is the Smoke Test. The typical sequence of steps in this brief and inexpensive test includes installing the application, starting it, creating a file using the application, saving and closing the file, and then restarting the application again. Next, open the file just created, make a few changes to it, save it and close again.

The third type of test is Graphical User Interface (GUI) Testing, which is performed once a build is accepted. The usual types of defects found include text expansion, resulting in truncated strings; GUI alterations, resulting in overlaps of GUI elements and controls or misalignment of their automatic hotkeys, resulting in duplicated hotkeys; hard-coded strings, resulting in untranslated strings; and missing or extra controls, resulting in missing or broken functionality.

And the fourth is Linguistic Testing, conducted by language-aware or native language testers on the actual localized product, running exactly as it would be used by local users in their own languages. Such testing is required, since much of localization takes place out of context, and much of the software testing is conducted by test engineers rather than language specialists.

There are different methods as well. Standard linguistic testing can be performed with language resources located onsite or in-house, in dedicated test centers or via local in-country staff.

Linguistic testing using screenshots of the localized product is another method, which can be conducted onsite or offsite. In this model, the language aspects of linguistic testing are separated from the engineering aspects. Non-linguistic test engineers prepare screenshots of all the requisite parts of the localized GUI and provide them to the language specialists, and remote access to a centralized test environment provided to linguistic testers.

What are the challenges you typically face in Games Testing?

One of the first challenges is the mythology the game is based upon, and the creative development required to adapt it to a foreign culture. For example, many ideas, characters, and lore that may exist in one culture do not exist in others – in fact, they may well be completely unknown! A game developed in one culture or country may even contain elements that another culture has never imagined.
The next biggest challenge is the fonts. Many games use typical Roman fonts, but when localized into other character sets, you have text expansion, contraction, tone marks, and many other additions that developers may have never considered when originally coding the game.

Are there any particular languages that are more troublesome than others?

Any language outside of Roman characters provides many challenges. Of course, Hebrew and Arabic present their own unique challenges, but generally, if you are outside the Roman language set, you’re going to run into issues that many developers never even considered when the game was first designed.

Is there any standard on how Bugs are defined and resolved?

Yes, we have a severity level as well as certain types. The type will always depend on the game. It is also important to prioritize the bugs and their severity.

Severity expresses the impact of a bug on the end user, usually scaled from 1-4.

4) Trivial bugs, which are the very small bugs like missing punctuation, for example.

After logging all bugs into the appropriate bug database, any outstanding issues or questions should be logged in the Master Question and Answer document. This document should be provided to the client each time updated source files or bug reports are sent.

The types of bugs that are typically found are hard coded strings in the code (that are not translated), concatenated strings in the code (that cause the ordering of a translated string to not make sense), key mnemonics mapped to native characters on the keyboard that don’t work (both accelerator keys and shortcut keys), GUI layout (often changes due to resizing of labels for text), some apps might need specific drivers for your target market (locale), if you have help files, they will need to be tested, and if you have web links, make sure they also point to the appropriate location (especially if those pages are localized)

What are the Top 3 Tips that will save money and time for a Games Localization project?

The #1 tip is to start early! The earlier you start to look at your code and prepare it for some of the bugs listed above, the more time and money you’ll save. Tip #2, start small. If you’re not completely comfortable going into multiple languages at once, start with one, learn the ropes, find mistakes, make a corrections plan, and build on it for future languages. Tip #3, invest in tools. At the end of the day, a human touch will always be required, but the technology available will make everything way more streamlined as well as consistent.